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I look to my right. “Kris?”
Our eyes meet and he looks just as sad as I feel. “She doesn’t know about your brother, Delaney.”
Confusion grips me as I stand on weary legs, my heart hurting more than it’s hurt all year.
Kris’s annoying ex-girlfriend gives me a dismissive glance. “I don’t know shit about your brother unless he tried to steal him like he stole mine.” She points her finger at our ex-boyfriend. “You stay away from my brother. No more hanging out. No more taking him to get ice cream. You fucking stay away!”
Kris starts in on how he’s just trying to be a positive influence in the boy’s life and how that has nothing to do with her. But I’ve heard enough. The mention of my brother was a false alarm and this isn’t my business anymore.
This time I really do walk away, leaving them to their hateful argument. My head hurts and it’s not from the alcohol. I don’t know what’s going on; I just know that I want to be away from here.
Chapter 11
My front door swings open the moment I step on the porch. Cat greets me from inside my house, a frown so pitiful on her face, it almost makes me want to comfort her. I had called her the moment I left Fun Max House, running barefoot across the parking lot to my car. I couldn’t leave that place fast enough. Now, Cat reaches out and takes my kicked-off heels from my hand, opening the door wider to let me in.
“It’s going to be okay,” she says, even though she has no idea what’s wrong. From what I remember of our brief conversation, I was crying and blubbering about how much I hate Kris Payne while fumbling through my purse looking for my keys. She told me to calm down and drive safely and that she’d meet me at my house. Now that I’m here, with my baby sister treating me like I’m the younger one, I’m not sure I want to tell her everything going on in my head. It’s all just a bunch of pointless embarrassing crap that I’d rather bury deep at the bottom of my subconscious brain, never to remember again.
Cat shoves me into my bedroom where I rip off my dress while she finds a pair of pajamas in my closet and tosses them to me. I slip into the soft clothing, even though I’d really like to shower first to wash off the residue of this terrible night. When I’m dressed, Cat appears in front of me with a warm washcloth and a bottle of face wash.
“Clean off your makeup and meet me in the living room when you’re done,” she says, squishing her lips to the side. “You did a really great job on your winged eyeliner, by the way.”
After doing what she says, I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly, preparing to meet my sister in the living room and listen to her pry all of my secrets out of me. When I step into the living room, my breath catches in my throat.
The main lights are turned off; the only light in the room coming from a strand of clear Christmas lights that are draped over the curtains, around the back of the couch and up the entertainment center. Two purple aromatherapy candles sit on the coffee table, their flames burning the soothing scent of lavender. Between them on the table are two pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, their lids removed and a spoon shoved into the deliciousness underneath.
The television is on and the DVD player is paused on the opening credits of my favorite movie—Pretty Woman.
“What is this?” I ask, trying not to burst into tears again.
Cat sets a box of freshly baked cookies from Nancy’s Bakery on the coffee table and hands me one of the two wine glasses in her hand. She fills my glass all the way to the top from a bottle of Moscoto and then clinks hers to mine in a toast. “This is to help you forget about whatever that asshole did to make you cry.”
When the credits roll and my stomach begs me not to stuff another cookie down my throat, I push the bakery box away and sit back on the couch. Cat picks up the bottle of wine and wiggles it, showing less than an inch remaining, sloshing around the once-full bottle. “We sure know how to put it away,” she says, tossing her head back and chugging the last of the wine, then overdramatically wiping her mouth with the back of her hand like a drunken sailor.
I laugh and my phone beeps from the arm of the couch. I lean over and see Nathan’s name light up on the screen, but I don’t click the message to see what it says.
“Is that Nathan again?” Cat asks from her spot on the other side of the couch. She rolls toward me on her knees, trying to get a peek at my screen. I nod and roll my eyes. She’s so close now, I can smell her wine breath, so I playfully shove her back on her side of the couch. “He’s been texting you all night. What is he saying?”
I sigh. “He’s asking what I’m doing with Mom, and why my texts are so short and what’s wrong because he can tell when something’s wrong.” I make air quotes when I say the last part.
“What are you doing with Mom?” Cat asks.
I shake my head. “Nothing, that was just my excuse when I left after Kris called.”
“Ahh,” Cat says with a big nod of her head, as if it all makes sense now. “So…Kris called you? And…” she says, her eyes going wide as she tries to ever-so-casually get me to finish her sentence for her. “And…then he told you to…?”
I let out an even longer, more annoyed sigh and tell her what she wants to hear. “And he told me to meet him at Fun Max House for an employee team-building thing.”
The movie credits come to an end and the DVD menu pops back on the screen. I grab the remote and press play. It may just be the sugar and wine talking, but I need to tell someone everything that’s swirling around in my mind. And there’s no one more trustworthy than my baby sister.
So I spill the story of the whole night, starting with the pool games and the sideways glances from Kris, to how tipsy I got and how I almost fell over until Kris grabbed me. I tell her how he looked when he told me to take a walk with him, and how the veins in his muscular arms sent chills down my spine every time he whacked a mole. She listens to me talk with an uninterrupted focus, as if her survival depended on stories of my life.
My phone lights up three more times with messages from Nathan, but I don’t read or answer them. All I had told him earlier was that I’d had a rough n
ight with Mom, and she stressed me out so much that I was going to go home and go to sleep early. So, if anything, he doesn’t deserve replies because he’s texting me when I’m supposedly asleep.
I finish telling Cat about how Kris gave our tickets to the little boy and she holds out her hand to stop me. “So…um, Delaney? You do realize that everything he’s done is so freaking adorable and he totally likes you. Why are you upset about this?”
Her question is so ridiculous, I actually burst out laughing. “Yeah, so, that’s all that happened before.”
